Family Fun

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Pony-Watching on Assateague Island

Planning our weekend trip to Chincoteague, I spent an hour or so tooling around on TripAdvisor, looking for activities to do that would take us out of the campground. I knew that we would want to get in a good few hours at the Assateague Island National Seashore beach, and beyond that I wasn’t really sure but I was hoping to see the famous wild ponies. (Which are actually ponies – not horses.) So Saltwater Pony Tours, with it’s 750+ rave reviews on TripAdvisor, caught my attention right away.

Saltwater Pony Tours is just one of several pony-viewing boat tour companies operating out of Chincoteague, but was by far the highest rated. As a concession to COVID-19, they’ve implemented a new policy – at least temporarily – of one family/group (plus the guide) per boat, meaning you automatically get a private tour for your family. Between that policy, the reasonable price, and the piles of outstanding reviews, I was sold. Luckily, there were several available time slots, and I booked us in for a two hour tour starting at 3:00 p.m. on Saturday. We rolled into Chincoteague around lunchtime, grabbed some snacks at a waterfront restaurant, got the kids ice cream, and then headed to the marina. Our guide/captain, Casey, met us at the dock and escorted us onto the boat – a large, beautiful pontoon that we had all to ourselves. Steaming out of the harbor, Casey oriented us to the geography of the islands and pointed out wildlife, including pelicans diving for their happy hour.

Our attitude whenever we are out for a wildlife-viewing adventure is: nature gonna nature. We know wildlife is wild (that’s the appeal, right?) and that there’s no guarantee of any sightings. Worst case scenario, we spend two hours on a boat on a beautiful day. Can’t really beat that, even if we don’t see any animals.

As luck would have it, though, within a few minutes of pushing off the dock, Captain Casey got a radio call – ponies! One of his colleagues from the tour company was reporting that there was a group congregating in an area called Black Duck Gut, which is pretty much inaccessible (thanks to tides, wind, and shifting sands) unless you really know what you’re doing. Fortunately for us, we seemed to have the best and most skillful navigator in the islands driving our boat.

Casey expertly steered us through the channels and within minutes – there they were, the famous wild ponies of Chincoteague (actually Assateague)!

My small horse fangirl was entranced. She has read Misty of Chincoteague (I haven’t – must correct that) and she and Captain Casey spent the ride over discussing the book (he’s a teacher in his regular, non-summer life) – at least until we got to the ponies, and then she just stared starry-eyed.

In fairness, though, we were all doing that.

Thanks to Casey’s expert navigation, we were able to get up close to the ponies – within 50 yards! – and bob around watching them for over an hour from the boat. (He explained that they consider the boats as just “part of nature” but if they were ever approached on foot, it would be a different story.) Between the excellent viewing spot and my sick zoom lens, I was in wildlife photography heaven.

The highlight was seeing all the adorable foals – especially this wee one, who Casey told us was only four or five days old!

We actually got to see it nursing! Totally unforgettable.

After the baby had been nursing for awhile, Casey predicted: “He’s gonna lay down in a milk coma soon.” Sure enough…

Down he flopped.

Casey explained that ponies and horses only lay down when they are feeling really comfortable and safe. Our pontoon (and one other that made it into the channel) clearly was not bothering them at all.

The new baby was adorable, but he or she wasn’t the only foal in the group. This one was born in the spring sometime.

And still enough of a baby to need Mama’s milk.

We watched the ponies graze on the short salt grass for over an hour, completely transfixed, and then reluctantly turned away and headed back to civilization.

On the way back to the dock, Casey showed us the spot where the famous annual pony swim takes place, and regaled us with an insider’s view of the action. Then – because over an hour of close-up pony watching in Black Duck Gut wasn’t enough and we had more treats in store – we spotted another band of ponies on the other side of the island.

Casey explained that the ponies tend to congregate in bands of mostly females with one dominant male. The group we had been watching on the other side of the island was led by a male named Riptide, who had been king of the islands for years. This band was following a much younger – three years old – male named Norm. Riptide would never let Norm near his ladies, so Norm has to make his own destiny.

Seems like Norm is doing just fine.

It was an absolutely magical two hours, and we couldn’t have asked for a better experience! Casey’s knowledge of the waters around the islands and the ponies themselves made for the perfect pony-viewing tour. We felt incredibly lucky to have gotten to see these beautiful creatures wild and free in their natural habitat.

After the pony tour, we were all walking on air – but Assateague wasn’t done with us yet! The next day, driving back to camp from the beach, we got lucky enough to see ponies for a third time – grazing on salt grass right by the side of the main road! Steve pulled over and I darted out with my big camera.

Hey, look, it’s our old buddy Riptide! (He’s the brown pony with the blond mane – an unusual combination, making him easy to spot.) Riptide and his ladies were accompanied by a gaggle of cattle egrets.

Totally amazing to see this majesty right off the side of the road!

Throughout the pony tour, I kept using the word “magical” – which is what this experience was. Seeing the famous ponies up close was definitely one of the wildlife-viewing highlights of my life. We were very conscious of how lucky we were to be sharing space with them. I hope we return to Chincoteague and Assateague and see the ponies again someday (soon), and I hope that this experience stays with Peanut and Nugget forever.

Have you ever been to Assateague?

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Camping on Chincoteague

After more than a year of going basically nowhere, we were all stir-crazy and itching to get out of the house and do basically anything other than hike our local trails (as nice as they are). But I don’t really have the ability to take a weeklong vacation right now – having just started a new job – and there was almost nothing available in the way of beach houses anyway. After spending several hours scrolling Airbnb and VRBO unsuccessfully, I hit on the idea of a camping trip. Even the campgrounds were mostly booked, but I found a KOA with availability on Chincoteague Island, about three-and-a-half hours from D.C., and leapt on it. So in the late morning last Saturday, we shoved off for Chincoteague.

We rolled into Chincoteague around lunchtime and after a quick snack at a waterfront restaurant (crab legs for me – I had to share every other bite with Nugget) we hopped aboard a boat for a tour with Saltwater Pony Tours. It was a magical experience that deserves its own blog post (so that will be next Friday) but – spoiler alert above, we saw the famous ponies and spent more than an hour observing them up close. Totally incredible.

Still reeling from the incredible pony-watching experience, we made our way to the campground and staked out a spot for our tent. I’d booked us one of the “primitive” tent sites, which were already crowded by the time we got there – but we found a little nook near the marsh where no one else had set up. Steve suggested that people might have avoided it on the theory that it would be buggy but after a few layers of bug spray, the mosquitos weren’t too bothersome. And I pointed out that there was standing water all over the campground – there must have been a storm – so if they were avoiding this spot because of fear of bugs, the joke was on them because our site was the driest one I saw all weekend, and it had an amazing view.

The Assateague Island Light, right across the marshy creek!

Dinner the first night was shrimp boil foil packets, which Peanut helped me assemble – followed by s’mores, obviously. The Hershey bars I packed for the purpose had inexplicably melted and turned into liquid goo (how? nothing else melted?) but I rigged up a squirting system and it ended up being kind of amazing. Not that I will be melting all s’mores chocolate going forward.

Home sweet home – from left to right, Peanut’s sleeping bag, Steve’s, mine, Nugget’s. Notes on the sleeping arrangements: Nugget was obviously delighted to have Mommy next to him all night; Peanut brought five stuffed animals; Steve’s air mattress got punctured by a tack that stowed away in Peanut’s backpack (“YOU’RE NOT ALLOWED TO HAVE TACKS!” … “I DIDN’T KNOW, IT WAS STUCK TO MY BOXCAR CHILDREN BOOK!”).

On Sunday morning, after a mostly decent night’s sleep, considering the arrangements, we drank our coffee with a view of the Assateague Light – not too shabby. And then headed out for the one must-do activity of the day…

The beach! We were a ten minute drive from the Assateague Island National Seashore beach. (I had actually wanted to camp on Assateague, but turned my sights to Chincoteague when Assateague was – unsurprisingly – booked solid for the Fourth of July.) But it was a convenient drive and we sailed through the check-in thanks to our America the Beautiful pass (seriously, best purchase).

We were on the sand by 9:00 a.m., which was perfect timing. The beach wasn’t too crowded yet, we got a money parking spot, and it was fairly cool with a refreshing morning breeze. We didn’t plan to get there that early, but after drinking our coffee and having breakfast at the campsite, we figured we might as well go to the beach early since there was nothing else to do – it ended up being totally the right call. (By the time we left at around 1:30, the cars were parked along the road a mile back, and there was a massive line to get into the park.)

It was a gorgeous beach! I grew up going to Cape Hatteras every summer, so I have a deep affection for the National Seashore system as it is, and Assateague was every bit as beautiful as Hatteras.

Assateague National Seashore was a perfect place to spend the Fourth of July – I always want to be around water, but we usually do a lake day. The beach was a fun way to mix it up, and we all had a fabulous time. I showed the kids how to build drip castles (“That looks like poop!” ~Nugget), Steve took a nap in the beach chair, and we spent hours wading in the surf and jumping over the waves.

Perfect!

After we had thoroughly doused ourselves in ocean water, we meandered to a trail with a “pony overlook.” I did see the ponies again, but only through the viewfinder of my gigantic zoom lens, and I couldn’t get a good picture – plus there were armies of mosquitos that were intent on eating us alive, bug spray be damned. (They were near the road heading out of the park, so I got some good pictures on the way out – stay tuned next week.) So we didn’t stay long and headed for the opposite of the National Seashore…

Maui Jack’s Waterpark. Had to happen! It was right at the entrance to the KOA campground, so naturally the kids noticed it immediately. Nugget had a fabulous time – he was too short for the really big waterslides, but he bounced back from that disappointment and did the lazy river three times, got dumped on by the gigantic bucket in the little ones’ area, and hit the smaller waterslides dozens of times. Peanut spent the entire time pouting on a lounge chair; we couldn’t figure out what her problem was. Can’t win ’em all.

Fourth of July dinner at the campsite – campfire nachos for the whole family (delicious, but would have been better if a third of the jar of salsa hadn’t ended up in Nugget’s tummy before I got the chance to put it in the nachos) and hot dogs for the kids, cooked over the fire with their telescoping toasting forks that I bought because I’m a soft touch. And then we crashed pretty much as soon as the sun set, and continued our grand family tradition of somehow missing the fireworks.

On Monday morning, we planned to hike before heading out of town. The idea was to hit the Lighthouse Trail and then the Wildlife Loop on Assateague. Lighthouse Trail first – it was a short hop through the woods to the Assateague Island Light.

The woods were swarming with mosquitos – you could tell they were bad because they were even biting me (and my bitter blood is usually disgusting to insects, it’s a gift). So we didn’t stay long – just long enough for me to snap a couple of pictures, declare “Another lighthouse for Mommy’s collection!” and flee back to the car. No one wanted to do the Wildlife Loop after being eaten alive on the Lighthouse Trail, so we packed it in and headed to the Chincoteague Diner for breakfast, and then home to warm showers.

It was the best kind of weekend, though! Entirely outdoors, mostly unplugged, with some beach and some wildlife and some hiking, and we all ended up exhausted and filthy at the end. Can’t complain about any of that!

How was your Fourth of July?

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Tales from the Exurbs, Vol. VIII: Lord Chuckingham

The other day, Steve rushed into the house and excitedly announced that we had a “new neighbor.” Since we’ve barely met any of our existing neighbors, I wasn’t sure why the fanfare – but then he pulled his phone out and showed me a video of a rather beefy fellow eyeing him suspiciously and then disappearing under our shed.

The kids were thrilled, obviously. Our very own neighbor groundhog! Can life get better? Seriously, can it? Over dinner, we had a ferocious family debate about what to name him. Peanut and I plumped for “Phil,” after his famous relation, but Steve said we were being “speciesist” and that not all groundhogs are named Phil. Eventually, after some truly skillful advocacy, Steve persuaded us all to agree to his choice of names.

Meet Lord Chuckingham. Because he’s dignified. See it?

After dinner, Steve suggested that we should all go look out the sunroom window, because Lord Chuckingham might be hanging out by his palace gates. Low and behold – he was, and I snapped a few pictures through the sunroom window (including that first one, above). Then Steve suggested I might be able to sneak outside and get some better snaps without scaring His Lordship, if I was super quiet. It was worth a try, so I rushed out the front door, crept around the side of the garage, laid down in the grass and army crawled into the middle of the yard for a clear shot.

Almost there. What I do to get good pictures for you guys, I mean, really.

Your Lordship! Welcome to the neighborhood!

He wasn’t sure what to think of me. (Worth noting; I was all the way across the yard – about 75 feet away, or more – when I took this picture. Kudos, again, to the P1000 and its sick zoom lens.)

He decided to crouch down and hide, but continued to keep an eye on me. I read this signal as “go away” so I carefully and quietly crept out of the yard and back in the house. A few minutes later, he disappeared under the shed and we haven’t seen him since; it’s been scorching hot outside so I assume he’s staying cool in his burrow (smart groundhog).

Welcome to the neighborhood, Lord Chuckingham!

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Tales from the Exurbs, Vol. VII: One Year

I can’t believe this: it’s been a year since our moving truck rolled out of Old Town Alexandria and transported us one county – and what sometimes feels like half a world – away to the exurbs. In some ways, it feels like we have been living this exurb lifestyle forever; in other ways, I’m surprised to wake up and not find myself in my little rowhouse in Old Town.

On the day we moved in, driving to pick up my kids from their babysitter’s house, I saw a wild turkey loitering by the sign at the entrance to our neighborhood. If this is a sign of things to come, I thought, we’re in for a treat, living here. The past year has brought us so many cool wildlife sightings; from gorgeous orange foxes running through our front yard at dawn to the nesting pair of eagles – and their chicks! – at our favorite local park, just ten minutes away, I sometimes feel like I’m living in a NatGeo special.

We loved living in Old Town, and there were so many advantages to our walkable city lifestyle – but one huge drawback was the lack of good outdoor space for the kiddos. We made the best of our little patio, but I wanted them to have a cool yard. They’ve made the most of our green space this past year – from sledding with the neighbor kid to climbing on their red and blue dome (which they could never have done in Old Town – I think the box it came in, pre-assembly, was bigger than our old patio; kidding, kidding).

I’ve been wanting a fire pit for ages. We could have had one in Old Town, probably, sure, but hanging out by the fire toasting marshmallows outdoors was on my list for when we moved and had more space to kick around. When we buy the forever house (in the same zip code, if we have our way) I want to install something more permanent. For now, this works. I’m keeping s’mores ingredients in my pantry at all times.

Here’s something I haven’t done yet: I haven’t rehabilitated this wild jungle. Last year, we moved in June and it felt like it was really already too late. This year, things were just busy – with changing jobs, getting to the finish line of the weirdest school year ever, and the first season (the first of many, I hope) of Little League. I did uproot a bunch of dandelion plants, so that’s something. We’ll do another container garden, and planting a really elaborate garden might just be another thing that has to wait for the forever house. But it has been nice to sit outside this spring (when the pollen wasn’t too outrageous) and enjoy the surprise blooming. Best thing about the first year in a new house: all the flowers that you don’t know to expect.

What a year it’s been! We’ve leaned into finding our favorite local restaurants, embraced the Little League lifestyle, gone trail-running in our neighborhood park, and started meeting people here. This is a small town, and I am looking forward to post-pandemic coffee shop visits and really starting to feel like a local. I do miss being able to walk out my backdoor and stroll to the library, the neighborhood playgrounds and pool, the waterfront, and dozens of different restaurants – there were advantages to city living, no doubt. But I am glad we made this move, and I can’t wait to settle in and spend years here.

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Tales from the Exurbs, Vol. V: Little Tree

Back in the day, when I lived in Mount Vernon, I used to joke with the neighbors that I loved seeing flowering trees in other people’s yards. They would laugh and nod knowingly. In the mid-Atlantic, flowering trees are emblematic of spring – they’re absolutely everywhere. From our iconic cherry trees clustered around the Tidal Basin in D.C. to the proliferation of redbuds (my favorite) to towering magnolias, flowering trees are pretty much ubiquitous around here at this time of year.

Well – it appears I now have a flowering tree in my yard, after successfully avoiding them for so many years. (If you know, you know – they look absolutely fantastic, but they drop petals like nobody’s business and are murder to clean up; magnolias are the worst offenders, by far.) Meet Little Tree.

Little Tree is a small tree down by our mailbox; it’s been weirdly landscaped so that it’s sort of umbrella-shaped; I can’t explain that choice. When we moved into this house back in June of last year, Little Tree was entirely green, so this is the first I’ve realized that it actually blossoms. At least until this point, Little Tree’s primary attraction was to the kids. They’re obsessed. If you couldn’t tell, they named Little Tree (and several of the other trees in our yard; I can’t keep track of them all, but they’re carrying on the grand L. M. Montgomery tradition around here) and they have been showering love on the poor thing ever since we moved in. I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve had to tell them not to water Little Tree; they’re constantly on the march into the front yard armed with watering cans and the hose, and it’s a miracle Little Tree hasn’t drowned. They also love to drag the chairs from our patio table around the house and set them up in some kind of weird ritual circle around Little Tree.

Poor Little Tree.

Little Tree’s surprise blossoming sent me scurrying to the internet to see if I could identify what it is. After thorough research, I’ve concluded that I think Little Tree is a serviceberry. The star-shaped white blossoms look like serviceberry blossoms to me, although I don’t remember actually seeing any berries in my summer inspections to make sure that Little Tree wasn’t being literally killed with kindness. But then again, I wasn’t looking for that. In any event, Little Tree doesn’t seem to be dropping petals, and at least it’s not a stanky, meaty magnolia. It has been an unexpectedly pleasant surprise to look out the window and spot the blossoms, especially on the mascot of the yard.

Don’t you love surprise blooming the first spring in a new house?

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Tales from the Exurbs, Vol. IV: Roadside Farm

Back in our city-dwelling days, in Old Town Alexandria, we were surrounded by restaurants and coffee shops; boutiques; wine bars. We could step out our back door and walk to the library, our favorite pizza joint, a waterfront park, and about six different playgrounds. The proximity to so many of our favorite places (and people!) was one of my favorite things about Old Town. But there were drawbacks as well, or we wouldn’t have moved to the exurbs – and don’t get me wrong, I love my new town and can’t wait to get immersed in the community life out here (as soon as the damn pandemic is over). When we moved, one of the things that I immediately noticed – and chuckled at – was the different surroundings. Instead of coffee shops and wine bars, we are surrounded by garden centers.

Driving out of our neighborhood, as soon as you get to the main road, there are about three garden centers in a two-block radius. If you’re willing to go a little farther, I can think of about six or seven more nearby. Since moving here, I’ve gotten to know a few of them. We’re renting our house, so I am not doing much to the outdoor space – as y’all know – but between bird feeders, houseplants, and my patio garden, I still find myself at my two favorite local indie garden centers about once or twice a month, and I have started to make note of their particular strengths. One has the best bird seed. The other has almost no bird seed, but a spectacular selection of houseplants, and good prices on outdoor planters.

I’ve taken Nugget to the garden center with the houseplants before (that’s why he now has a yew tree in his bedroom) but never to the other one. And every time I stopped by to grab another bag or two of Cole’s birdseed, I thought to myself that he’d love it. In the fall, there is a pumpkin patch with big inflatable slides and a bounce house; the rest of the year, randomly, there is a miniature farm right out front.

Because why not have pigs, chickens, goats, bunnies, and a couple of small cows just hanging out at the garden center? It’s the exurbs.

I finally got around to taking Nugget a few weeks ago. He loved it, just as I expected. We spent about forty-five minutes standing on the snowpack while he gave names to all of the animals. He even fearlessly stuck a hand inside the fence and petted this rooster, which I was not expecting him to do.

He named the largest pig “Mr. Big” and I would like a medal for holding it together. (Side note: which SATC lady are you? I’m a Charlotte.)

Mr. Big was grunting very noisily at the piglets. We have a connection, Mr. Big!

Our signal to go came when the rooster flew up onto the top rail of the fence (Nugget gasped: “I didn’t know he could do that!”) and started crowing loudly. Message received, fella.

We rolled on home after over an hour at the garden centers, and Nugget excitedly told Steve about the animals. “Where is there a farm near here?” Steve asked, confused. I gave him the intersection of two major roads about three minutes from our house. He was astonished, but – it’s the exurbs.

Have you ever gone out to buy birdseed and stumbled across a low key farm?

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Outdoor Report: February 2021

February was cold. We had back-to-back snowfalls; a couple of ice storms; and a lot of icy rain. Our house doesn’t get – or stay – especially warm, and I took to walking around with my hands curled around a steaming mug of tea a lot of the time, just to keep from chillblains. I tried squinting and pretending that I was living in a draughty Scottish castle, but it didn’t work.

As you can imagine, with all this cold, it was another indoor month. We did make a point of getting out and hitting the trails most weekend days, but hikes were truncated and we did miss a few because of yucky weather. Between the grim skies and the hibernating garden, I spent more time in my reading nook than in the fresh air. Really hoping that March, and the beginning of more consistently warm weather, will be the turning point.

Trail report. I read a beautiful quote earlier this month: “We cannot learn the story of the year if we read only eight or nine of its twelve chapters.” (Edward Step, 1930.) That was really our philosophy in February. We hit the trails in the mud and slush, and we slipped around our neighborhood park in the ice. Although we made a point of getting out, it was mostly to our local favorite – Riverbend Regional Park. Riverbend is a favorite for a reason, and we definitely enjoyed our rambles there. (Well, mostly. There was one very muddy day that I could have done without. Hiking in the mud isn’t my jam.) Hoping that March will bring more consistently hike-able weather, and that we’ll get to some trails a little further afield.

In the garden. So, I realized that I shared the above picture in my January recap, but it was actually snapped on February 1 – whoops! This is what the garden looked like for most of the month – although after a few warmer days and rains toward the end of the month, the snow is gone now. I have a big stack of garden books to read in the evenings ahead, and am still trying to figure out what I’m going to do about the big wild area. Now I am leaning toward planting some annuals. I don’t have much time left to make this decision!

At the feeders. (Another January picture – busted! But that view was pretty prevalent in February, too.) With great caution I will tell you that – so far, knock wood – my starling-repulsion techniques seem to be working. Between putting out food they don’t prefer in the feeders they can access, and their favorites in the starling-proof cage feeder, I have seen very few of them. They stop by now and then to see if I have let down my guard, but they leave right away. And even better news is: surprisingly, the Eastern bluebirds are able to get into the starling-proof cage feeder, so they’re still around! I had thought they would be locked out of the good stuff, but they surprised me. I’m so glad that my war on starlings didn’t have the collateral effect of driving away the bluebirds. They’re so lovely.

1000 hours outside. Oof. So, another largely indoor month. I guess that’s to be expected in pandemic winter. It’s funny – I love winter sports, skiing, ice skating, snowshoeing – and every year I say this is going to be the year I get the family into something new, but it never really happens. I didn’t even try this year, so that explains why – only 10.5 outdoor hours in February. And it would have been even less were it not for a 3.5 hour outdoor playdate last weekend. I’m still holding out the hope, or expectation really, that outdoor time will go way up once the weather starts warming up and we spend more time in the yard, on the playground, and on the trails and the water.

How was your outdoor February?

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Bad Day to Be a Frog: Great Falls, January 2021

It’s hard to believe we have been hiking at Great Falls for over a decade. Steve and I started coming to the park in January 2008 – thirteen years ago, crazy. One of the big draws in moving to the exurbs was being closer to this and so many other hiking spots – and while we have enjoyed the bounty of local trails, we’ve mostly focused on exploring other, less popular, parks near us. But recently the kids asked to go to Great Falls and we were happy to oblige. It’s always a delight to hike there, but I guess the park wanted to show us what we’ve been missing out on while we explored the county parks, because it delivered every element of the Great Falls experience.

Starting with the falls themselves – roaring!

I love watching the falls from the three successive overlooks and could stay there all day. Often in the summer months, there are whitewater kayakers and paddleboarders testing their skills, which is also such fun to watch. And sometimes, we see them in the winter, too…

Get a load of this guy! Hardcore.

I was very relieved to note that, as you can see here, he is wearing a drysuit. It was cold – about thirty degrees. The water must have been absolutely frigid.

After making a few heroic rushes at the whitewater, he let himself be carried downstream into Mather Gorge.

See him way down there? We were impressed, obviously. (I mused to Steve later that while my baseline is wanting to do ALL of the paddlesports, whitewater kayaking is pretty much the bottom of my list of water activities to try, although I do love watching the paddlers in action. I would like to go rafting, though.)

Eventually we tore ourselves away from the view and set off on our hike upriver. I love the trail that winds downriver from this point, but it’s very cliffy (that’s a word) and we can’t trust our two rambunctious, non-listening children to not go tumbling over the side. So we hike upriver, right along the water’s edge, instead. I do hope that one of these days I can wander downriver again.

As we headed off on our upriver walk, I spotted a bird flying up to perch in a high branch and trained my camera lens on it. Two ladies walking in the opposite direction stopped and asked me what it was. “I’m not sure,” I confessed, “it’s backlit. I’m hoping that when I get home I can adjust the exposure and figure it out.” We traded guesses – they thought by size that it was a pileated woodpecker, but it wasn’t sitting right and lacked the crested head. I theorized that it might be a yellow-billed cuckoo, but I really wasn’t sure. When I got home and adjusted the exposure so that I could finally see its markings I discovered – we were both wrong. Trail ladies, if you read this, it’s a northern flicker.

We parted ways and our family continued on our upriver hike. Steve and I chatted about a big trip we are planning for 2022 (more soon) and the kids lagged behind, dragging their little Sorel boot-clad feet and bickering. I peered through my camera viewfinder at some mallards, snapping away as we walked.

Suddenly I stopped short, gestured toward a little offshoot of the river, and whispered “Great blue heron!”

Steve didn’t see him right away; he had his eyes trained on the opposite bank – but this heron, who did not care at all about the hikers on the path, was on our side of the tributary, no more than fifteen feet away. (Great blue herons are famously indifferent to people; some of their cousins, like the green heron, are much shyer.)

This guy reminded me of Gru from the Despicable Me movies. Anyone else?

despicable me 2 thats GIF

You can totally see it.

(Worth noting: I did not get all up in Gru the Heron’s business to take these pictures. My bonkers wildlife camera has a 125x zoom capacity. Thanks again for the sick birthday present, Steve!)

Eventually he got tired of standing in one spot and stalked off to the opposite bank. At that point, I was ready to continue on with our hike – until Steve grabbed my arm and pointed again.

“He has something in his beak!” he said excitedly. “A fish or a crayfish or something!”

The light caught and we saw: it was a frog, a very unfortunate frog having a really, really awful day.

The heron kept dipping the frog back in the water, then pulling it out and carrying it in its beak as it stalked around the tributary. Washing the frog off? Playing cat-and-mouse with it? No idea. But it was fascinating – and a little alarming – to watch. And since he was clearly a terrifying frog predator, we changed his name from Gru to Baby Yoda.

GIF by moodman

Heh.

The kids were remarkably unfazed by their first predation event. Peanut complained about her boot the whole time and Nugget threw sticks into the water and pointed out “duck butts” every time the mallards dove for a fish.

(All pictures taken with Nikon Coolpix P1000, if you’re curious.)

Quite the epic day at Great Falls! It was a good reminder – while we’ve been enjoying exploring all the parks near our new home, Great Falls is a favorite for a reason; must come back here again soon.

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2020: A Look Back (Braces Self)

I almost didn’t write this post. Because do I really want to look back on this year that has felt like a decade, and not in a good way? To be honest, I’m not totally sure I do. But I always do this post, and while this year didn’t go to plan for anybody, I do want to pause to reflect on the unexpected sources of joy and growth that we drew upon to get through this year.

January. We rang in the new year on a hopeful note. Spent New Year’s Day hiking in Old Chatham, New York, then warming up at my high school BFF’s house. Home in Virginia, we also squeezed in a hike at Great Falls – one of our favorite parks. The falls were roaring that day! Later in the month, I spent a week in New Orleans at a litigation training conference. Didn’t get much time to explore – the conference kept us busy – but I did make it out to the French Quarter with a new friend, and had beignets twice. Unbeknownst to me, this was basically the only travel I’d do in 2020.

February. Work kept me super busy in February. I was preparing for a federal jury trial that was scheduled for mid-March, and was logging 14+ hour days, staying in the office until 11:00 p.m. most nights, and working through the weekends, to get through all of the pretrial work. Not many highlights that month – no hikes, no weekend fun at all – but I did get to celebrate with friends at my work wife Connie’s baby shower.

March. Forever known as “the month the world shut down.” Or, our world, anyway. My trial was indefinitely postponed, Nugget’s birthday party (scheduled for the end of the month) was cancelled, and we all headed home to sit and wait out the uncertainty. (Which we are still waiting out.) The kids got an “extended spring break” while their school figured out what to do (basically nothing – one Zoom session a week and a bag of worksheets; tuition dollars vey well spent). We all wondered what this new life boded for the summer and beyond.

April. As our time at home stretched on, new routines started to take shape. The kids and I began each morning with a long walk, often to a middle school soccer field where they could run around, then muddled through my amateur efforts at homeschooling them until lunchtime. Steve took over in the afternoons and I hopped on my work computer and fielded client questions about how to manage their workforces in these weird times. I grasped a bit of sanity via my running shoes and signed up for a training and virtual racing program from Another Mother Runner.

May. More of the same. Still home, still basically locked down. We walked the neighborhood. We homeschooled. We hiked on the weekends – when we could. It seemed like everyone and their mom had suddenly discovered our favorite hobby, and the trails were alarmingly crowded, but we found a few hidden gems. We also started gradually moving things over to our new house, one county over, in preparation for a June move.

June. This month was all about packing and moving. Our truck rolled out of Alexandria mid-month and we prepared to start a new chapter out in the exurbs. The move was bittersweet – away from so many of our favorite places and people. No more walking to the library and the farmers’ market; no more back patio hangout sessions with the best neighbors ever. But a lot of good things in our new town, and we looked forward to learning them all.

July. Steve and I got a long break this month, because the kids went up to New York to spend a month with my parents. We missed them, but it was also really needed – on all sides. We needed a break from the kids and they needed a break from us, and my parents really missed them. Steve and I spent our time “off” from parenting pretty much the way we always do – hiking and kayaking – but without breaking up fights or doling out snacks. Refreshing! And we also did a massive purge of a bunch of stuff we’d been moving from house to house and never using – Steve rented a dumpster and we filled it to the brim. The kind of project we could never do with the kids around.

August. As the calendar turned to August, Steve and I drove up to my parents’ house to pick up the kids. From there, we were supposed to go on to Cape Cod for a summer vacation, but had to cancel last-minute because of COVID-19 travel advisories. So instead, we quarantined in my parents’ house for a week, then drove back home to Virginia, disappointed and disheartened, but glad to be reunited with the kiddos. We tried to make a staycation work, but the weather was crummy and I ended up just working the whole time – and with that, our vacation hopes for 2020 evaporated. I tried to look on the bright side – we were (and remain) healthy, our families are healthy, and we kept our jobs despite the imploding economy – but I wasn’t in the best place. Just very frustrated that irresponsible government and willful blindness and intransigence by half the population had stolen half the year from us, with no end in sight. We were responsible and careful and rearranged our lives to stay home and keep our communities safe, and we felt like we were being punished; it felt very unfair.

September. The year from hell continued into September, as we stared down the barrel of a very different school year. The kids headed “back” to school – to second grade and kindergarten, respectively – but not in the usual sense. We elected virtual schooling for them as the best of all the bad options, and the whole family transitioned, again, into a new routine for our days – Nugget on his computer next to me, Peanut working side-by-side with Steve. Running kept me sane, and I banged out a few virtual 5K races and a trail 10K.

October. Feeling more and more frustrated with having put our lives on hold for so many months and given up so much to subsidize others’ bad behavior, I decided that I was not going to have my favorite month taken away from me. I finally booked that hot air balloon ride – a Valentine’s Day gift from Steve, right before the world went to hell – and we hit the pumpkin patch and took a walk around Old Town to check out the Halloween decorations. It wasn’t much, but it was something. The kids had fun contactless trick-or-treating in the neighborhood, dressed as Batgirl and the Mandalorian, respectively.

November. It was a low-key month; I swallowed my disappointment at not traveling for Thanksgiving and we threw ourselves into local fun. Met up with friends for a hike in Rock Creek Park; ran several virtual races – including Nugget’s first kids’ mile – and celebrated Thanksgiving with a prepared foods feast at home after our dishwasher spontaneously combusted. Good times.

December. The end of an absurd year, but I can’t bring myself to join the voices shouting “Don’t let the door hit you on the way out, 2020!” To be honest, I’m too afraid of what 2021 might have in store. We finished out the year the same as we’ve been living since March. Another month of muddling through distance learning, tramping along the trails at Riverbend Park, watching the birds from the kitchen and sunroom windows, and collapsing on the couch at the end of the days. There was one snow, which was fun; the rugrats pulled out the sled and went screaming down the backyard hill with the neighbor kid. I continued to drive the struggle bus. We celebrated a quiet Christmas at home with our little bubble, and looked ahead to hopefully better things down the road.

And so ends the WORST YEAR EVER. I do hope 2021 holds better things in store, although at this rate I’m not especially optimistic. But here we go: New Year’s is just around the corner. Bring on the cocktails.

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By Land, By Sea, By Dirigible

Friends who have been reading my words since earlier this year (thank you!) may remember that I was so excited about my Valentine’s Day gift from Steve: a gift certificate for a hot air balloon ride. Going up in a hot air balloon has been on my bucket list since I can remember even having a bucket list, so I’ve been really looking forward to this.

I booked a ride in October, hoping for some good fall foliage, and last Saturday was the day! Steve and the kids and I drove out to Winchester to meet up with the balloon pilot and the other passengers. We all helped lay out the balloon on the grass at the launch site.

Starting to inflate! Exciting!

Before I knew it, the balloon was hovering over the basket! I climbed in quickly and almost immediately, we started rising off the ground.

Steve was armed with my new birthday camera and shooting pictures from the ground. We were literally hundreds of feet in the air when he took this picture – pretty amazing, huh?

Meanwhile, I was having the time of my life in the balloon! It was totally crazy to be up in the sky, floating in a little basket.

Totally incredible view! There was no wind, so we never made it out of downtown Winchester; just floated above the town, taking in the scene below and the mountains in the distance – gorgeous. Eventually the pilot brought us down gently on a patch of grass right in town; an impressive landing.

Such an awesome experience! Thanks again for the super cool gift, Steve – and for driving us all out there, marshaling the kids while I was off ballooning, and photographing the experience from the ground. I will totally do this again, but I think the next time, I’d like to go up during a big event like the Adirondack Balloon Festival. I’m hooked!

Have you ever gone up in a hot air balloon?